Nighthawk

by F. M. Parker

  “Your son may want to talk to someone other than his dad and grandfather. If that happens, ask Mm to come visiting. It’s only a short day’s ride and I could use some company myself.”

  Tamblin read the woman’s measuring stare, and concluded she was on to his strategy. He hoped she would not give it away. “I’ll tell him of your kind invitation. I’ll say good-bye now.” He touched his forehead in greeting to the woman and crossed the room to the door in long strides.

  Samantha Tamblin saw her father emerge from the house and hurry down toward them. She watched his progress, waiting expectantly.

  “How did it go, Dad?” she asked eagerly. “Any objections from Blackaby?”

  “Everything went fine as far as reaching an agreement on who had what range. But the rustler stories appear to have more truth in them than we thought. Sam, it may not be safe for you and we had better find a place for you to stay in Tucson.”

  Sam stepped close to her father and put her hand on his arm. “Please don’t be afraid for me. I’ll always stay near you or grandfather. That way I’ll be safe.” She squeezed his arm and turned her smiling face to include the elder Tamblin. These two men were her happiness, her very life. They wanted a ranch of their own, had worked many long years to accumulate the cattle to start it. Nothing must stand in the way of reaching that goal. Least of all her.

  “After we have become very prosperous, maybe even rich, I will travel to St. Joseph and go to a proper young lady’s school. And to do it all very correctly, I’ll spend a lot of your and grandfather’s money to buy enough beautiful clothes to fill a whole room.”

  She stepped to her horse, brushed the accumulation of snow from the seat of the saddle with her gloved hand, and swung astride. “Let’s go. We’ll growl right back at the Growler Mountains. No Tamblin is a coward.” She reined the horse away from the hitch rail and out of the yard.

  Dan Tamblin looked at his father. “She must never be out of our sight. And by God we will raise a lot of cows in two years, or maybe three; we’ll have enough money to see that she goes to St. Jo in style.”

  Lafe Tamblin’s hand touched the butt of his six-gun. “Maybe I’m a little old, and I’m not as fast as I once was, but I’m still pretty damn good with this. And I’d fight Satan himself to keep her out of danger. She can have all my share of the money we make anytime she needs it.”

  They mounted and spurred to catch the girl.

  Sarah left the window and reseated herself near the fire.

  “They’ll not last a year,” prophesied Blackaby. “Either renegade Indians or the outlaws will kill them. Unless they pack up and get out of that country.”

  “I do not believe they will leave by their own free will,” said Sarah.

  “Then they are all dead people,” declared Blackaby.

  CHAPTER 2

  Arizona Territory—March 1884

  Jacob S. Kempt, superintendent of Yuma Territorial Prison, arose before daylight and dressed quickly in the dark. He left his residence on the bluff above the Colorado River and climbed the gravelly road leading up the steep slope of Prison Hill.

  Kempt glanced up at the top of the hill where the tall black silhouette of the prison walls obscured the brittle brightness of the desert stars. Then he swung his look down at the sleeping town of Yuma. The safety of all those people and the several hundreds more scattered across the Arizona desert was his responsibility. It was a heavy load. Reinforced in his determination to carry out his plan, he hurried up the grade.

  At the iron-barred gate of the north sally port, he called out loudly. “Guard on duty, this is Superintendent Kempt. Open up.”

  A guard carrying an oil lantern and a Winchester rifle came out of the guard shack and hurried the few feet to the gate. He lifted up the light so its rays would shine between the heavy bars and illuminate the face of the man standing in the darkness just outside.

  “Good morning, Mr. Kempt,” said the man. He set the lantern down and pulled the thick locking bolt free from its embedded slot in the four-foot-thick adobe-and-stone wall. The gate swung open easily on its greased hinges.

  “Hello, Pike,” said the superintendent, stepping through the entryway that was dwarfed by the massive wall. “Is everything in order this morning?”

  “Yes, sir. The prisoners have been up and getting ready for over an hour.”

  “Good,” said Superintendent Kempt. He led the way back into the guard shack. “Light another lantern and hand it up to me.” He continued across the room and began to climb a stout wooden ladder bolted to the wall. Upon reaching the ceiling, he unlocked a heavy trapdoor, and hauled himself through it to step out upon the three-foot-wide top of the exterior prison wall.

  “I’ll be in the west gun tower for an hour or so,” Kempt called down to Pike.

  “Yes, sir,” answered the guard. “Here’s your lantern.”

  Kempt lowered the trapdoor and heard Pike ram the bolt home to lock the passageway. The strict adherence to security rules pleased the superintendent. He held the lantern out before him and moved off cautiously along the narrow catwalk.

  A second guard on duty in the gun tower saw Kempt approaching and unlocked the entrance. He remained near the opening, holding his rifle ready, waiting for the superintendent to come inside to safety.

  “Good morning, Mr. Kempt,” said the guard.

  “Good morning, Teller,” responded Kempt. “I’ll be out on the landing until the prisoners leave.”

  “Anything you need from me, sir?” asked the guard.

  “No. You may go back to your station,” said Kempt and crossed the small room and went out onto the narrow balcony fronting the tower.

  The wind gusted in cold from the snow on the mountains to the north. Chilled, the superintendent put his hands into his pockets and, his brow furrowed with misgivings, stood looking out across the dark prison yard.

  Kempt allowed his ears and eyes to range out across the yard and buildings. He believed a penitentiary had a life, a character of its own, and the actions of its inmates were its pulse. He felt confident that from watching and listening to the prisoners in the exercise court, or in the chow line, he could detect when a breakout attempt was brewing, or judge how near a riot was to exploding. At least he had been successful in reading such signs for the past twenty years, and had not once lost control of his savage charges.

  And he judged that within the next two or three days, all hell would break loose—unless he moved now, decisively, ruthlessly.

  In the middle of February, the territorial governor had informed the superintendent that the U.S. Congress had again approved the Arizona Territory budget without funding his request for enlarging the penitentiary. That had left Kempt with an intolerable situation.

  Expanded twice since its original construction in 1876, the prison was designed to hold forty-two prisoners. It now held one hundred and six murderers, bank robbers, and other felons. Eight prisoners were crowded behind the bars of each nine-foot-by-eight-foot cell. The only furnishings in the cubicles, which were carved into the live rock of the hill, were two tiers of bunks three beds high. Two convicts had to sleep on straw pallets on the floor, their faces within inches of the stinking slop buckets full of human waste.

  Fights among the inmates in the cramped quarters were daily occurrences. Three of the most severely injured men were in the infirmary, one with a cracked skull and two with knife wounds.

  By the end of February, Kempt had devised a plan that might, with a great amount of good luck, get him safely through the year until the next Congress met. He would construct a temporary prison with convict labor. Build it far out in the inhospitable desert, miles from water, and encircle it with a tall stone wall. Once it was finished, he would use the inmates locked up there to quarry and haul to Yuma the stone that would be needed to expand the main prison when funding was provided.

  Carefully he had selected thirty-two halfway manageable inmates, taking great pains to pick men whose absence would break up
the cliques and gangs that existed within the prison. He had considered sending just the trustees and those inmates with short sentences remaining. But he needed those men at the main prison; several of them were his spies, his indispensable eyes and ears inside the walls.

  He chose six of the toughest guards to go with the prisoners. For added insurance, two Quechan Indian trackers were hired at a monthly salary of thirty dollars each. Kempt also promised them fifty dollars in gold as a bounty for the return, dead or alive, of any prisoner who tried to escape.

  The first gray light of dawn crept over the tall whitewashed walls and Kempt began to make out the forms of the other buildings inside the compound. There was a light in the mess hall, but he knew the inmates that were leaving today would already have eaten. Lights also shined from the barred windows of the main cell block. Now and then he caught the sound of a distant complaining voice.

  The sun, still hidden below the horizon, speared a high feathery cloud in the eastern sky, coloring it dark red like a smear of blood. Kempt raised his view to look outside the prison at the sunrise. Then dropped his eyes to glance up the valley of the Gila. He found the river meandering sluggishly toward him, its water a wet silvery sheen in the growing light.

  Beneath the bluff on the north side of the prison, the Gila was swallowed by the mighty Colorado River, surging in swollen with snow melted water from the Rocky Mountains. Then the waters of the two rivers, joining in a great flood, rushed south in search of the salty waters of the Gulf of California.

  A steamboat whistle broke the morning stillness and Kempt knew the captain of the large stern paddle-wheel vessel that had arrived the day before was preparing to cast off on his return journey downriver. After a two-day run down to the Colorado, the boat would find the calm blue water of the Gulf of California. There the shallow-draft river craft would wait for the sleek clipper sailing ships that came hurrying down the California Coast from San Francisco with their tons of supplies. The cargo would be off-loaded onto the riverboat and ferried up the river to Yuma and the penitentiary. The puffing boats with their bales and boxes of supplies, and bronze steam whistles tooting, were always a welcome sight to the isolated townsfolk,

  The jingle of chain and stamp of horse hooves sounding from the compound drew Kempt’s attention back inside. He saw four guards, each leading a team of horses, come out of the stables.

  Calling orders to the animals in low voices, the men positioned them astride the tongues of wagons heavily laden with grain for the horses, food and tools for the men, and iron bars and doors for the new prison. The guards hooked the traces of the harness to the wagons, climbed up into the high seats, and picked up the reins.

  The door of the main cell block swung open. A guard wearing sergeant’s stripes came out, moved away a few paces, and stood ready with his Winchester. “Bring them out,” he ordered in a loud voice.

  Four men, at spaced intervals fastened by wrist manacles to lengths of chain, shuffled out, moved away from the door, and stood clumped together. Another bunch came out, and yet another, until there were eight knots of men in the yard.

  Several prisoners, knowing Kempt often spied on them from the gun tower, sullenly looked in his direction. Even at this distance, Kempt felt their hating eyes on him.

  A second guard came through the open door from the cell block and called to the sergeant. “All’s ready.”

  “Two strings of prisoners go to the rear of each wagon,” commanded the sergeant.

  The prisoners strung themselves out in rows and moved toward the wagons. As each group reached a wagon, the second guard fastened the end of their chain to steel locks bolted to the rear of the vehicles.

  “That sure as hell will hold you,” said the guard. He turned and called to the man with the rifle. “They’re chained.”

  The sergeant nodded his head and hurried across the prison yard to the gun tower. He looked up at the man on the landing and saluted.

  “Mr. Kempt, the prisoners are ready to leave.”

  “Very good, Sergeant,” acknowledged the superintendent. “Make reports of your progress every third day. Work the ass off the prisoners and they will give less trouble. I don’t want any of them to escape. Is that fully understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” answered the guard.

  “Send Gray Antelope to me,” directed Kempt.

  “Yes, sir.” The guard saluted, about-faced, and hastened to join the cavalcade of men and wagons forming up in front of the north gate.

  Kempt watched the procession file out through the opening in the great wall. From habit he counted the prisoners as they were towed along behind the wagon.

  The prisoners’ odds for making good an escape attempt increased greatly once they were outside the walls. If by some bad fortune he was to allow these thirty-two criminals to get loose on the people of the territory, his professional career was finished. But he knew there was no alternative to his plan.

  A remuda of seven spare horses herded by the Quechan Indians on horseback trotted clattering up the caliche bank from the meadows along the Colorado River. They fell in at the rear of the column. The sergeant called out to the Indians and one turned his mount and rode into the prison and up beneath the gun tower. He looked up at Kempt without uttering a sound.

  “Gray Antelope, hear me clearly,” said the superintendent, leaning over the railing of the balcony and speaking in a hard voice. “If any prisoner tries to escape, bring him back dead. Do you savvy? Dead!”

  “Savvy,” said the Indian, his large black eyes staring back without emotion from under the prominent ridges of his brow. He spun his pony and spurred it from the prison yard. Inside his mind he smiled. He would make many gold coins during the next year.

  CHAPTER 3

  The cackling laughter of the crazy prisoner drifted across the sun-baked prison compound. In the shade of the porch of the commissary, the guard un-propped his chair from against the wall and looked at the man. Why didn’t the lunatic keep his mouth shut and stop that infernal crowing?

  “Crazy, you’ll have a heat stroke out there in the sun,” the guard yelled at the tall, lanky man laying the stone wall of a new building in the hot August sun.

  “No, sir, not me, Guard Al,” answered Crazy Caloon, raising his head to stare at the man with the rifle. “I just want to be sure to finish this guardhouse so you and the other guards will have a warm place come winter.”

  With a horny finger, Caloon flicked away a rivulet of sweat from the beads on his forehead and the puddles in his sun- bleached eyebrows. He finished wiping his face with the sleeve of his worn prison shirt and reached for another piece of lava rock.

  “Hell, man, it’s three months before it’ll turn cold,” called the guard. “Go on inside and loaf like the other prisoners ‘til it cools off. It must be a hundred and twenty degrees in the shade.”

  Crazy Caloon skillfully finished fitting the slab of stone onto the straight, plumb wall and then looked searchingly at the guard. “Are you telling me I can’t work anymore?” he asked dejectedly, and cocked his head to the side and watched the guard.

  “No, I’m not saying that,” said the man, his voice climbing a notch in anger. He could catch a couple winks of sleep if the prisoner would go into his cell and settle down. “Kill yourself if you want to. I’m saying you can get into the shade until the sun drops a little lower if you want.”

  “Thank you, Guard Al, but working will make my twenty years go faster.” Caloon laughed again, shrill as the excited chatter of a squirrel.

  “Okay, have it that way,” said Al. Best let the man alone; the sergeant would raise hell if he caught a guard trying to get a prisoner to stop working, no matter how hot it was. He re-leaned his chair against the wall and closed his eyes.

  Crazy ran his tongue over the edge of his yellow-stained teeth and reached for another slab of rock. As he laid the slab in place on the wall, he swept his eyes over the two-hundred- foot-square prison compound enclosed by a ten-foot-high stone wall. It wa
s a bare fraction of the size of the pen at Yuma, a rat hole of a prison. With the tall walls stopping all wind, it baked like a fry pan under the sun.

  Past the south end of the cell block, on the opposite side of the prison yard, he saw a second guard standing in the shade of the mess hall. In the tower on the south wall, a third guard faced back toward the two on the ground. Between the three, they could see every inch of the enclosed compound.

  The sergeant and the remaining two guards would be looking for coolness in their stone cabin outside the wall. The location of the Quechan trackers would be anybody’s guess. They had built a small brush-and-stone shelter when the contingent of prisoners and guards had first arrived at the site. They seldom used it now. But they would be close enough to hear a pistol shot or the heavy bell used to signal an escape.

  Crazy dropped his head and began to work on the wall again. Every day since he had walked through the iron gates of Yuma Prison, he had thought of only one thing. Escape. He had obeyed every rule, controlled his quick temper, and did not strike back at the cruelty of the guards. In March when they had chained him like a dog to the tail end of a wagon and marched him into the desert, he had begun his plan to escape.

  And today of all days he could not afford to be locked up. Only one more step of his plan remained to be accomplished. If he pulled it off, all would be ready for him to go over the wall tonight.

  “That’s the last of the rock, Guard Al,” called Crazy to the guard by the commissary. “Is it all right if I go fetch another wagon load?”

  “If it’s okay with the guard at the gate,” growled Al.

  Caloon filled a half-gallon canteen at the spring and walked to the wagon to toss the water into the bed and close the tailgate. He moved into the deep shadow of the stables and leaned against one of the upright supports. The pungent smell of the sweaty horses and fresh manure lay heavy in the heat.

  The odors recalled pleasant memories for Crazy. They reminded him of happy times before his son had been shot down in a burst of gunfire by two drunken cowboys firing blindly along a street in Tucson. And he, in terrible grief and anger, had rushed from his livery stable, walked straight into the men, and shot them dead with his six-gun before half a hundred witnesses.